September 15, 2008

So it's been a crazy September to this point, and it's been tough finding time to blog. But with the mad rush of work, at least temporarily, in the rear-view, I find myself relaxing at my first GDC. I've made it to Austin, and I'm now sitting in Ballroom B with a couple of other stragglers waiting for the first session, a lecture by Chris Crawford. In fact, Chris is right now sitting about 10 feet away typing on his MacBook Pro, probably finalizing his talk.

It's a little odd; I've read much about the man, and even watched one of his talks from many years ago on YouTube. But I've never seen him in person. I'm looking forward to his talk on Interactive Storytelling, although I expect it will contain considerable material from other recent talks he has given. I'm sure he'll focus on his Storytron, but I haven't been keeping up with that lately, so if he does it will be interesting to see what kind of progress the group has made.

It's a strange sensation being here for this conference. I've attended many conferences in my life, but they have all been scientific in nature and have tended to be quite dry for the most part. It's weird seeing the same overall conference structure and design, but instead of research talks and pharmaceutical displays, I'm preparing for game design talks and game industry displays. It's a bizarre sort of frameshift.

There is a whole list of lectures today on storytelling in games, which should make for some interesting, if not excessively hypothetical, discussion. I'll try to update my thoughts on the lectures and other highlights as the conference proceeds.

Yeah, very nice meeting you as well. I'm kicking myself a bit for not getting off my butt and submitting that idea to GDC this year, but there should be plenty of other opportunities. Not sure what kind of audience it would get, though...

> Describe The Monk's Brew

The monk turns to you and proclaims:

"The Monk's Brew is a blog about indie game design, development, and play, with a particular emphasis on the adventure genre. It is brought to you by Rubes, an indie game developer from Salt Lake City, Utah."

> Describe Rubes

The monk looks up from his mug and utters:

"Rubes (Mike Rubin) is an indie game developer who started gaming with text adventures and this book, even before the heyday of the Apple ][. He's also the budding pioneer of a new genre in computer gaming, three-dimensional interactive fiction (3D/if). His first project in this genre is Vespers."

> Describe Vespers

The monk clears his throat and begins:

"Vespers is an adaptation of Jason Devlin's interactive fiction work of the same name. It is an experiment to discover what kind of horribly disfigured offspring might result from the mating of an IF engine with a 3D first-person graphics engine."